Plan for City’s First Public Celestial Observatory Comes Crashing Down

 

The Amateur Astronomers Association said the city’s demands for its insurance coverage proved unworkable. 

This article originally appeared in The City.

By Jonathan Custodio

BRONX - A city known for producing stars just lost a project to let New Yorkers see them. 

The Amateur Astronomy Association, a nonprofit volunteer group, will no longer be following through on its plan, announced in January, to bring the city’s first free public observatory to Jerome Park. 

“It is with great regret that I inform you that AAA has concluded our best efforts to build a NYC public observatory in the Bronx’s Jerome Reservoir Park,” Alfredo Viegas, president of the association, told members over the weekend in an email obtained by THE CITY, saying that “the city imposed licensing requirements this summer” that proved unmeetable.  

Those included requiring the Association to accept complete legal liability, to hire an observatory director and to adopt a time-limited license. 

“We have a very, very small endowment. We just did not have the financial resources to be able to take on unlimited liability. I guess, no fault of their own, because this is something they do for everyone who wants to use city land, right?” Viegas told THE CITY on Monday in a phone interview. 

“The city basically requires that they be held harmless. So, if someone fell and tripped, even if we were not holding a program, they just walked by and fell,” the Association would potentially be responsible. “Or, if something happened in the evening when we were not there, and, through no fault of our own or no fault of the city, we could be held liable. And so that became an obstacle that we were unable to overcome.” 

A Department of Parks and Recreation spokesperson said the agency had been working in good faith negotiating a licensing agreement with the association to install the observatory.  

Viegas, who noted that the Association first got the licensing agreement in June, emphasized that the Association is “very hopeful that we're going to be able to still bring this project” to the five boroughs. 

“We've learned an important lesson, which is that we now understand that we probably need to do it privately. And so, we probably will talk with some other private parties, nonprofits as well. And our goal is to still try and achieve the goal in bringing the public observatory to New York City,” said Viegas.  

While Jerome Park will no longer have an observatory, Viegas said the group is “in conversation with another potential site” in the city but would not disclose where as “we’re still in very preliminary stages.” 

‘We Haven’t Given Up On It’

Viegas said the Association had spent about $21,000 of nearly $37,000 raised since 2022 on transporting, cleaning and preparing the dome along with consultants for plans including architectural design — all in an effort to install the observatory, which would have been accessible on the banks of the Jerome Park Reservoir via a walkway with a concrete ramp. 

The Bronx observatory, estimated to cost over $100,000, had been in the works since its departure from Nassau Community College in Long Island in 2019, with the effort kicking into gear in 2021, according to Viegas. 

The steel dome observatory would have allowed New Yorkers to gaze at the stars, comets, asteroids, the sun and planets of our solar system through a state-of-the-art telescope. It would have been surrounded by approximately eight nearby schools, including the Bronx High School of Science and Lehman College. 

Gothamist reported in June that the association was struggling to get over what they viewed as bureaucratic hurdles from the city. 

After the association officially announced plans for the observatory in January, the Parks Department, which approved the project in 2022, told the organization it would need an inspection from the Department of Buildings, a review by the city’s attorneys and an increase in insurance coverage from $1 million to $5 million. 

“We raised our insurance limits, as the city requested, but, ultimately, when someone asks that you have unlimited liability, there's no way you can meet that with our limited resources,” Viegas told THE CITY on Monday. 

In a written statement, a Parks Department spokesperson told THE CITY that they sent the association an updated version of the draft agreement in mid-October, which included a commercial general liability insurance requirement of $2 million per claim. The spokesperson said the permits required from the buildings department and other city agencies are part of standard licensing agreements. 

Viegas said the association will continue its work in bringing science education to New Yorkers, which has included free lectures and telescope observing sessions at Jerome Park and Woodlawn Cemetery. 

“We haven't given up on it. We are still pursuing it. We still have the equipment that was donated to us, and we still have a lot of members who would like to see this come to pass,” said Viegas. “We're definitely going to pursue it. And I hope to have some news on that hopefully in the next few months.” 

‘Bummed Out’

One person who gave to the Association, Dante Olivia Smith, purchased an apartment with her husband near Jerome Park in 2022, and said they were “bummed out” by the news.  

“I grew up in Boise, Idaho, and there's an observatory in the sand dunes that we used to go to every summer. My dad had a less powerful telescope that we would look through in the summers,” Smith told THE CITY. “Because I've had access to these facilities throughout my childhood, I am aware of how transformative it can be, and how much it opens your eyes to the possibility of the universe.”

Smith added that “being in a community that I think oftentimes feels like we're overlooked by the city, there was this real sense of opportunity that we would have something special here,” as our “lovely, welcoming neighborhood would have been richer for this, would have had this incredible public resource that now we won't have at our doorstep because the city can't figure out how to make this sort of donation work.” 

Viegas told donors in his email that they could be refunded or redirect the money they’d sent into the group’s other programs. 

“I was happy for them to keep that money. They did offer to refund our money. I just was like, you're still doing good things. This is a cool organization. I don't need fifty dollars back,” said Smith.

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